Rock Your Soul: 25 Inspirational Quotes from Rock Legends

"got to hold onto what we've got 'cause it doesn't make a difference if we make it or not"

- Bon Jovi

"To me, rock music was never meant to be safe. I think there needs to be an element of intrigue, mystery, subversiveness. Your parents should hate it."

- Trent Reznor

"Rock and roll is a nuclear blast of reality in a mundane world where no-one is allowed to be magnificent."

- Kim Fowley

"Dream On, Dream On, Dream On Dream until your dreams come true."

- Aerosmith

"You’ve always got to remember, rock and roll’s never been about giving up. For me, for a lot of kids, it was a totally positive force... not optimistic all the time, but positive."

- Bruce Springsteen

"That's what drew me to rock music in the first place - that sense of remaking the world on your own terms."

- Stephan Jenkins

"All of a sudden, someone threw me in front of this rock and roll band. And I decided then and there that was it. I never wanted to do anything else."

- Janis Joplin

"I felt very proud to be part of a music scene that was changing the face of commercial music and rock music internationally, but I also felt like it was necessary for Soundgarden - as it was for all of these Seattle bands - to prove that we deserve to be on an international stage, and we weren't just part of a fad that was based on geography."

- Chris Cornell

"Rock music is not meant to be perfect."

- Ozzy Osbourne

"Life sucks, but in a beautiful kind of way."

- Axl Rose

"Everybody's got a reason to live, baby, everybody's got a dream and a hunger inside"

- Kiss

"Rock and roll music, if you like it, if you feel it, you can't help but move to it. That's what happens to me. I can't help it."

- Elvis Presley

"You see, rock and roll isn't a career or hobby - it's a life force. It's something very essential."

- The Edge

"You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past."

- Johnny Cash

"As a rock star, I have two instincts, I want to have fun, and I want to change the world. I have a chance to do both."

- Bono

"In the studio you can auto tune vocals, and with drums, you can put them on a grid and make them perfect. I hate that sound. When someone hands me a record and the drums are perfectly gridded and the vocals are perfectly auto tuned, I throw it out the window. I have no interest in rock music being like that."

- Taylor Hawkins

"What would rock and roll be without ambition, craziness, danger, and fun?"

- Pete Wentz

"If it's illegal to rock and roll, throw my ass in jail!"

- Kurt Cobain

"If you want to release your aggression, get up and dance. That's what rock and roll is all about."

- Chuck Berry

"Rock music should be gross: that's the fun of it. It gets up and drops its trousers."

- Bruce Dickinson

"Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans."

- John Lennon

"Rock and Roll has no beginning and no end for it is the very pulse of life itself."

- Larry Williams

"I think that brown people are attracted to rock music because it speaks on the spectrum of pain that brown people are predisposed to."

- Princess Nokia

"Rock and roll is not just music, it is a way of life, it has its own spirit."

- Anupam Roy

"If you don't know the blues... there's no point in picking up the guitar and playing rock and roll or any other form of popular music."

- Keith Richards

"Rock and roll music - the music of freedom frightens people and unleashes all manner of conservative defense mechanisms."

- Salman Rushdie

"Rock music is niche."

- Bono

"I hate most of what constitutes rock music, which is basically middle-aged crap."

- Sting

"I love all women, I will never stop, I want every girl that ever lived. I fuck everything that moves and if it doesn’t move… we work something out."

- Gene Simmons